The reflection of electromagnetic waves from stratified anisotropic media

A direct approach to the investigation of the reflection of electromagnetic waves from a plane interface separating a vacuum half-space and a stratified anisotropic layer is presented. The formulation involves the generation of a Riccati differential equation for a certain 2×2 reflection matrix. The approach is already well established for scalar problems, but its implementation in cases which allow mode conversion is believed to be new. The reflection matrix concerned is unitary when the anisotropic layer is nondissipative, and an efficient numerical method to solve the equation is outlined. Sample results are presented to illustrate the theory